RED-TAPE OUTRAGE
Agonizing search after Rikers ships mentally ill inmate to psych hospital
Inmate DyQuan Washington, like a wayward wisp of smoke, left his Rikers Island cell and disappeared in the wind.
His mom feared her mentally ill son had somehow died after his April 13 departure from the jailhouse, and she began making phone calls with some trepidation. But the city medical examiner's office said the 27-year-old Washington was not in their morgue. The NYPD had no clue. His parole officer was in the dark. The Correction Department claimed to know nothing.
Hope came in the unlikely form of federal marshals at Paula DuBose's Washington Heights door, their four visits with a warrant the best indication that Washington was out there somewhere.
But the increasingly worried DuBose received no other answers in call after fruitless phone call.
“I don't know where my son is,” the desperate DuBose told the Daily News earlier this month. “It's like he's a ghost.”
With the help of The News, DuBose was finally reunited with her missing son — who was never actually missing at all, just lost in a land of red tape and misinformation.
Washington was apparently shipped directly from Rikers to Elmhurst Psychiatric Hospital, in Queens, with no one bothering to share the transfer details with his mother. The Department of Correction cited federal medical privacy law for keeping details of the move from the frantic mom, who is his primary caregiver, and kept his parole officer out of the loop because there was no warrant out for her son's arrest.
A law enforcement source told The News that correction officials were not forthright about Washington's relocation, leading parole officials to issue an arrest warrant for a man actually sitting inside a Queens mental health facility. According to DuBose, the warrant blocked her from filing a missing persons report — and it exacerbated concerns that her mentally unstable son might die in a confrontation with law enforcement if they found him and tried to arrest him.
Inmate advocates described the missing/not missing person case as typical of a criminal justice system still struggling with the care of its mentally ill population. Washington was committed via court order after jail medical staff concluded that he posed a threat to himself or others if released, according to a source familiar with the situation.
When the mother finally arrived to see her son on the evening of July 5, he emerged sporting a dazed look, illfitting clothes and unkempt hair.
“DyQuan!” cried DuBose, cautiously approaching her son with arms wide open. “Oh my God! Thank God!”
Washington walked right past her, turned around and left without acknowledging her.
DyQuan Washington's long struggle with mental illness began at age 3, when a facefirst fall on a bathroom floor caused frontal lobe damage. Suddenly, the little boy's world went topsy-turvy.
"He lost control of his emotions, would laugh when he's sad instead of crying," recalled Paula DuBose.
By the time Washington was 13, he was diagnosed as bipolar with ADHD. The active teenager began a medication regime to slow him down, but keeping him on the prescribed drugs became a chore.
"That was my biggest probtaking lem with him, his meds,” said the 42-year-old DuBose. “When he's stable, we are fine.”
The teen turned rebellious and ran with the wrong crowd in their Washington Heights neighborhood. He was first arrested in the same year as his bipolar diagnosis, and he stayed in a Poughkeepsie juvenile facility until age 16.
While locked up, Washington enrolled in high school classes and was close to receiving his GED — but he never finished up once released. The teen instead focused on his music while taking a construction job.
If things outwardly appeared normal, DuBose said, it was clear her son's condition was morphing into something more sinister.
“He was telling bizarre stories, he was hearing voices,” she recalled. “He wouldn't take his meds and we would bump heads and I would call the police to take him to the hospital.”
DuBose toyed with the idea of institutionalizing her nowschizophrenic son, but she couldn't go through with it: “I wanted to have faith in my child. I tried to give him a chance.”
Inmate advocates say the odds were stacked against Washington once his odyssey through the city's criminal justice system began. The
subsequent lack of communication with his primary caregiver and parole officer this year serves as a sad example of how the city struggles to deal with mentally ill inmates, they claim.
From age 19 through the present, Washington bounced in and out of psychiatric hospitals, upstate prisons and Rikers Island. He was sentenced in 2011 to eight years for two robberies, and served three years before a 2014 release, records show.
Shortly afterward, Washington checked himself into Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center — only to land in trouble again when he failed to contact his parole officer while getting treatment. The miscommunication landed him back in prison.
“That made no sense to me,” his frustrated mom said. “How can he be violated when he checked himself in to the hospital? This system is built to fail the mentally ill.”
Washington's latest jail stint was linked to the same Wards Island facility, where he allegedly attacked another patient on Aug. 18, 2016, court records indicate.
He served time in two of the most violent upstate facilities, Clinton and Green Haven, with multiple reported cases of prisoner abuses by officers. He was held in solitary confinement for months, a move that made his condition even worse.
“I would go up there to visit him and most of the time, I couldn't see him because he was always in the box,” she said. “When I did finally see him, he wasn't the same. His spirit was broken.
“Inmates with mental illness should not get put into solitary confinement; they already have the mental illness, all those days alone just puts them in a worse state.”
The state and city correction systems have since moved to drastically limit the use of solitary for detainees with mental illness.
The city Correction Department has long wrestled with devising sensible release plans for mentally ill detainees.
For years, that population was dropped off in Queens with a MetroCard and $1.50. That approach was supposed to change after a class-action suit brought by a group of seven mentally ill inmates. The case, known as Brad H. after the lead plaintiff, was settled in 2003 after the city agreed to a series of sweeping reforms. The city promised to make sure those inmates are sent out with a medical plan to ensure they continue their medications.
But court records show that didn't happen until last year.
“For many years, defendants were noncompliant with this important task, something we expressed great concern about over numerous reporting periods,” wrote compliance monitors Henry Dlugacz and Erik Roskes in their latest report published June 29. The monitors also urged correctional health staff to reach out to family members and prior caregivers of mentally ill inmates for assistance.
“Mental health staff frequently fail to engage in outreach to community treatment providers even when such contact would be indicated to clarify diagnosis or treatment needs,” the latest report says. “Currently, the system remains in a state of transition, and the results are uneven.”
DuBose searched high and low for Washington, calling shelters, his friends, and hospitals in Brooklyn. One inaccurate tip suggested her son was dropped off at a homeless shelter.
She even signed up for online inmate alerts, using variations of the spelling of her son's name in the offchance he was the victim of a clerical error. She filed two complaints with the Department of Correction over her missing son, along with one against the 33rd Precinct and a desk sergeant who declined to file a missing person report for the desperate DuBose. The NYPD said its patrol guide says nothing about refusing to declare a person missing if there is an outstanding warrant.
As the days passed, DuBose's worry grew until she contacted The News for help. The DOC told a News reporter what DuBose had not heard, that her son was transferred to the psychiatric ward back in April.
Ward employees told DuBose that Washington keeps to himself and remains distrustful of everyone else.
"That's not my son,” she fretted. “He hasn't been the same since he was sent upstate and they put him in the box. People with mental illness should never be in solitary. That's not my son.”
DuBose remains perplexed as to why administrators at Rikers didn't tell her he was sent to Elmhurst upon release or why a warrant was out for his arrest if authorities knew how to find him.
"Something is not right. Why did they give me different stories regarding his whereabouts?” she said. “This doesn't make any sense.”
And though she's aware of the federal privacy law, she questions the exclusion of her son's primary caregiver from the process.
"He's not in his right state of mind because of his mental illness,” the mother said. “So how is he able to make decisions for himself?'